“We continue to expect this reserve rate to increase a bit in the balance of year, similar to the modest increases we've seen over the past few quarters.”

In context

“out for many quarters now, we continue to expect this delinquency and write-off rates to increase over time and they are likely to remain below pre-pandemic levels in the fourth quarter. Turning now to the accounting of this credit performance on Slide 9. The quarter-over-quarter growth in our loan balances, combined with a modest increase in our Card Member loans and receivables delinquency rate resulted in a $321 million reserve bill. This reserve bill, combined with net write-offs, drove $1.2 billion of provision expense in the third quarter. As you see on Slide 10, we ended the third quarter with $5 billion of reserves, representing 2.7% of our total loans and Card Member receivables. This reserve rate remained about 20 basis points below the level we had pre-pandemic or day one CECL. We continue to expect this reserve rate to increase a bit in the balance of year, similar to the modest increases we've seen over the past few quarters. Moving next to revenue on Slide 11. Total revenues were up $1.8 billion or 13% year-over-year in the third quarter. Our largest revenue line, discount revenue, grew 7% year-over-year in Q3, as you can see on Slide 12, driven by spending trends we discussed earlier. Net card fee revenues were up 19% year-over-year on an FX adjusted basis, as you can see on Slide 13. This growth remains very strong and is powered by the continued attractiveness to both new and existing customers of our fee-paying products due to the investment we've made in our premium value propositions. As we expected, growth moderated a bit this quarter from the high levels we saw earlier this year, reflecting our cycle of product refreshes. This quarter, we acquired 2.9 million new cards. Importantly, the acquisition le”